CanSpeccy

Friday, May 11, 2018

Paul Gottfried, writing at the Unz Review, argues that U. of T.'s Professor, Jordan Peterson, is wrong in his contention that political correctness derives from post-modernist theory, beneath which banner Communism has been imported to the West.

Rather, Gottfried argues, political correctness in the West is the manifestation of "a post-Marxist leftist ideology stressing universalism, equality, and the social guilt of white Christians, and more particularly heterosexual, male white Christians."

But neither Peterson nor Gottfried has it right. Political correctness is no more nor less than a new term for old fashioned intolerance, and specifically the intolerance promoted by the state.

In Europe’s 16th and 17th Century Christian world, political correctness (had the term then been coined) meant burning people alive for being a Catholic in a protestant jurisdiction, or for being protestant in a Catholic jurisdiction.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

All politicians use words as instruments for the control of those they govern. and, in general, they do so with little regard for the truth. Credibility, however, is vital to the effectiveness of a politician's words, and thus politicians however mendacious must, if they are to retain any influence, ensure that their public utterances have a degree of plausibility.

Plausibility, however, the British Government, and in particular the Prime Minister, Theresa May, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have utterly failed to achieve in their statements about the alleged poisoning earlier this year of former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the quiet English cathedral town of Salisbury.

On the contrary, virtually everything they have said concerning the incident is self-evidently false. So blatantly so that one can take Theresa May's continued role as UK Prime Minister as proof of the flaccid feeble-mindedness of the UK Tory Party as a whole that it tolerates such appallingly incompetent and dishonest leadership.

Confirming this view is a report by three British academics, Professors Paul McKeigue, Professor David Miller and Professor Piers Robinson, who have placed the future of their university careers in jeopardy by publicly stating that the British Government's claims of Russian responsibility for the Skripal poisonings are nothing but a farrago of nonsense, and are indeed lies of the crudest and most blatant kind having no apparent purpose other than to stoke hatred of Russia, a nuclear super power, with no evident ill-intent toward the United Kingdom.

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Haaretz, May 3, 2018: Let’s leave aside our discomfort at the sight of the prime minister’s Office Depot performance. That’s a matter of style and taste. But it’s impossible to ignore the new records Israel keeps setting, again and again, for lack of self-awareness, or one might say double standards and hypocrisy.

Israelis really and truly believe it’s shocking to discover how Iran brazenly lied to the world, just as they really and truly believe it’s terrible when dictatorships shoot live bullets at demonstrators, when tyrannical regimes imprison political opponents without trial, when apartheid states maintain two penal systems, when residents of dictatorships are kept in their own country as if in a cage, when people are persecuted for their religion or nationality, when societies close their doors to refugees, when countries scoff at international law. The nation of morality can’t remain indifferent to such shocking developments.

The alleged WMD attack in the quiet cathedral city of Salisbury, England, on the former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, by means of a hyper-deadly nerve agent smeared on a door knob, or sprayed by a drone, or added to the ventilation system of Skripal's car, or possible added to the Skripal's breakfast porridge, has revealed the British Government to be comprised of nothing but a bunch of fakes, frauds, feebletons, and fabulists intent on the promotion of Russophobia.

Moreover, it is open to question whether the British Government ever had evidence of a nerve agent attack on "British soil." Not only has the Resident in Emergency Medicine at the Salisbury Trust Hospital where the Skripals were allegedly taken for treatment denied that anyone was treated at the hospital for nerve agent poisoning, but the Skripals, the alleged victims who were supposed to be at the point of death, are apparently now fully recovered, but held incommunicado but the British authorities, for reasons not given.

Thus, in the present absence of public information about the investigation relating to the incident, and the gagging of the alleged victims by the British authorities, it is entirely consistent with what is known to assert that the business is totally fake: either a complete non-event, or a staged, non-deadly pseudo attack in which the alleged victims, from whom the public are not allowed to hear, could have been willing participants. Indeed, the Skripal saga looks very much like a staged event designed to stoke hatred of Russia.

Time for Mrs. May to offer President Putin an apology, but don't hold your breath.

The whole Salisbury/Skripal affair was made up, plotted, stage managed and produced by British, American and German intelligence services. Everything the UK Government under Theresa May said about the Salisbury affair was pure lies, scripted and made up as talking points sent from Washington DC and Brussels. Everything May said, and Boris Johnson, and Amber Rudd and Philip Hammond with regards to Russia and the Salisbury affair was pure lies. The entire story the English put forward regarding the Salisbury affair kept changing and there were terrible inconsistencies. The whole episode from start to finish was a classic English Monty Python circus act. The Salisbury-Skripal affair was pure English Tory lies. Besides Theresa May who ran the Home Office when all these terrible things [apparently] were going on, knew all about it, did not lift a finger to stop it, did not put up a fight or even resign and lead a rebellion from the backbenches. Theresa May authorised everything she now claims is a terrible threat to UK National Security. The woman must go.

It seems to me that the reason none of the MSM are doing any investigating/reporting of the Salisbury affair, apart from official handouts, is that the government have slapped a D-Notice over the whole incident and it is not possible to report that a notice has been issued.

To those not familiar with British Officialese, a D-Notice is an order issued by the Government to the media prohibiting publication of certain information. So a D-Notice covering the Skripal poisonings or some aspects of the case would mean that the truth will never be publicly known.

And if the Government does not wish the public to know the truth of the matter, then they must clearly intend that the public believe something that is not true, and in particular, it seems almost certain that the untruth that Her Majesty's Britannic Government wants the public to believe is that the Skripals were poisoned by the Russians.

And if the Russians didn't do it, then it must surely have been the Brits themselves, unless it was one of their special friends, Israel or the United States.

The feds are creating a $15-an-hour job designed to stop thousands of high-paying jobs — not to mention huge royalty revenues and property taxes — that would be created if the federally approved twinning of the already-existing 65-year-old Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline is allowed to proceed.

Meanwhile, The Mustard Seed Street Ministry — and thousands of other faith-based organizations like it — got zero Canada Summer Jobs funding from the federal government to help feed, house, clothe, train and love Alberta’s most vulnerable and poor citizens experiencing homelessness.

Many faith-based organizations were denied funding from the federal program owing to them refusing to sell their souls for a few pieces of silver. Trudeau and his government insisted that to qualify for a grant to hire university students, the applying organization had to sign an attestation stating that the organization’s core mandate respects “reproductive rights.”

As Steve Wile, CEO of The Mustard Seed, says, the Christian aid organization has never had to take a stand on abortion before because its core mandate is to minister to tens of thousands of poor and addicted people in Calgary, Red Deer and Edmonton. Nevertheless, the wording of the attestation made it impossible to sign, since it required applicants to essentially agree with the federal Liberal party platform on abortion.

Monday, April 23, 2018

Daily Mail April 23, 2018: "British intelligence investigating the Salisbury poisonings have identified a Russian assassin who could be behind the attack."Could be behind the attack, eh?LOL"Codenamed 'Gordon', the 54-year-old former FSB spy is thought to use the cover name Mihails Savickis and two other aliases."Codenamed "Gordon", but using a bunch of different names, eh?LOL

"However, police fear the suspect has already traveled back to Russia and may never be brought to justice."So the bugger's already skidaddled, eh?LOL

The British government shared what was supposedly a dossier containing sensitive intelligence to convince allies and EU member states to support its accusation of Russian culpability in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England on March 4.

But like the infamous 2003 “dodgy dossier” prepared at the direction of Prime Minister Tony Blair to justify British involvement in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the intelligence dossier on the Salisbury poisoning turns out to have been based on politically-motivated speculation rather than actual intelligence

British officials used the hastily assembled “intelligence” briefing to brief the North Atlantic Council on March 15, the European Foreign Affairs Council on March 19 and the European summit meeting in Brussels on March 23.

The Need for Dramatic Claims

When Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson ordered the production of an intelligence dossier to be used to convince allies and EU member states to join Britain in expelling Russian diplomats, they had a problem: they were unable to declare that nerve agent from a Russian military laboratory had been verified as the poison administered to the Skripals. As the well-informed former Ambassador Craig Murray learned from a Foreign and Commonwealth Office source, the British government military laboratory at Porton Down had been put under strong pressure by Johnson to agree that they had confirmed that the poison found in Salisbury had come from a specific Russian laboratory. Instead Porton Down would only agree to the much more ambiguous formula that it was nerve agent “of a type developed in Russia.”

May and Johnson: Needed dramatic claims.

So May and Johnson needed some dramatic claims to buttress their argument to allies and EU member states that the Salisbury poisoning must have been a Russian government assassination attempt.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

According to former UK Ambassador, Craig Murray, Jeremy Heywood, Britain's Cabinet Secretary and Head of the UK Civil Service, does not believe that Russia attempted to assassinate Russian traitor, double agent, triple agent, whatever, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England with the nerve agent, Novichok. As evidence, Murray cites a message to civil servants by Jeremy Heywood which reads, in part:

... after the nerve agent attack in Salisbury just over a month ago, I also want to take this opportunity to renew my gratitude to the hundreds of public servants – at home and abroad – involved in the response to that attack and the ongoing investigation. Their work was instrumental in ensuring widespread international support for the Government’s position on Russian responsibility for the Salisbury attack and the participation of many nations in the diplomatic sanctions that followed.

There is a seeming weirdness in the head of the civil service expressing gratitude, and indeed renewing his expression of gratitude, to public servants for doing the jobs they are presumably quite adequately paid to do. It may have been Murray's point, however, or one of several points, that Jeremy Heywood was expressing gratitude not for the readiness of civil servants to perform their duty with the integrity that employment in the public service should surely demand, but for participating in a charade designed to bullshit the public both at home and abroad with the object of stoking Russophobia.

In any case, as Craig Murray points out, applauding the work of public servants as "being instrumental in ensuring widespread international support for the Government's position" is rather different from, applauding the work of public servants in "establishing the truth of the government's position." This indicates, so Murray suggests, at the very least, skepticism among senior officials concerning the Government's claim that Russia committed an atrocity with a WMD midst England's green and pleasant land.

On March 22, the UK Court of Protection gave permission for blood samples to be obtained from the allegedly still unconscious Yulia and Sergei Skripal for analysis to be arranged by the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Warfare (OPCW).

Those blood samples were sent for analysis by the OPCW to several laboratories, among which was the Swiss Federal Institute for NBC-protection in Spiez. The Spiez lab. completed its analysis on March 27. The OPCW has not publicly disclosed what the Spiez lab. found. However, the Russian Embassy in London reports that:

The experts of the [Spiez] Institute discovered traces of toxic chemical called “BZ” and its precursors. It is a Schedule 2 substance under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

“BZ” is a chemical agent, which is used to temporary incapacitate people. The desired psychotoxic effect is reached in 30-60 minutes after application of the agent and lasts up to four days. According to the information the Russian Federation possesses, this agent was used in the armed forces of the USA, United Kingdom and several others NATO member states. No stocks of such substance ever existed either in the Soviet Union or in the Russian Federation.

In addition, the Swiss specialists discovered strong concentration of traces of the nerve agent of A-234 type in its initial states as well as its decomposition products.

In view of the experts, such concentration of the A-234 agent would result in inevitable fatal outcome of its administration. Moreover, considering its high volatility, the detection of this substance in its initial state (pure form and high concentration) is extremely suspicious as the samples have been taken several weeks since the poisoning.

It looks highly likely that the “BZ” nerve agent was used in Salisbury. The fact that Yulia Skripal and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey have already been discharged from hospital, and Sergei Skripal is on his way to recovery, only supports such conclusion.

It remains to be seen whether the OPCW will release the data to which the Russian Embassy refers, and thus either confirm or refute the Russian Embassy's claims. But that blood samples from the Skripals contained two nerve agents is not surprising given the mode of action of A-234, with which, so the British authorities claim, the Skripals were poisoned.

A-234 is a convulsant, which acts by preventing the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction, with the result that muscles go into full contraction, hence the symptoms of convulsions, vomiting, etc.. One can assume, therefore, that if they were victims of A-234 poisoning, the Skripals would have been treated with an agent having effects antagonistic to those of A-234. BZ, a paralytic drug, is such an agent, which acts by binding to acetylcholine receptors at the neuromuscular junction without activating them, thereby preventing muscle contraction, voluntary or otherwise.

Thus, whereas BZ would be an effective antidote to A-234 poisoning, A-234 would serve as an antidote to BZ poisoning, which if severe can lead to fatal paralysis and hence asphyxiation. So the presence of A-234 in the Skipal blood samples is not conclusive evidence that it was the poison, rather than the antidote.

That the powerful nerve agent A-234 would have been prescribed as an antidote to the rather less potent nerve agent BZ may seem improbable, but it must be remembered that the Salisbury Trust Hospital where the Skripals were treated is within seven miles of Britain's Chemical and Biological Weapons Research establishment at Porton Down, where doctors at the Salisbury hospital might well have sought advice on treatment for apparent nerve agent poisoning.

Certainly, the Porton Down lab must have a supply of A-234 on hand, since it was able to identify Novichok in samples provided by the police or Salisbury hospital, and for that they would have required a sample of authentic A-234 for comparison.

That BZ was the poison and A-234 the antidote, is consistent with the letter to the Times newspaper in which the Salisbury Trust Hospital's Resident in Emergency Medicine, Dr. Stephen Davies, stated that no one had been treated at the hospital for nerve agent poisoning. That would make sense if BZ, which is a readily available pharmacological agent, was considered to be just that, a pharmacological agent — not a WMD or nerve agent. Then Dr. Davies letter can be interpreted to mean that the Skripals were treated not for nerve agent exposure, but by nerve agent exposure.

The truth of what happened to the Skripals in Salisbury the day they were admitted to hospital for treatment of poisoning is unlikely ever to be known with any certainty unless the physicians and others who attended on the Skripals are allowed to come forward and provide evidence. So far, it appears they have been effectively gagged.

Specifically, one would like to know from the hospital staff whether they can confirm the claim of the "doctor," who attended on the Skripals in the park where they were stricken (and who requested that her identity not be disclosed) that the Skripals were vomiting and convulsing when admitted to hospital, i.e., showing symptoms of A-234 poisoning.

In addition, one would like to know (a) what treatments, including drugs, were applied to these patients, and (b) what analyses of blood and vomit or stomache contents were ordered by the attending physicians a the time the Skripals were admitted to the Salisbury Trust Hospital, and (c) what did those tests show?

Saturday, April 14, 2018

...the substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab.... The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.

BZ, or Buzz, is a common name for 3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate, a white, odorless, water soluble, crystalline solid, with a molecular mass of 337.419 and a melting point of 164 C.

Like botulinum toxin, BZ can kill through paralysis, and hence asphyxiation, although the modes of action of the substances differ.

Botulinum toxin inhibits the release of acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction, whereas BZ binds to the acetylcholine receptors at the neuromuscular junction without activating them. In either case, the result of a sufficiently large dose is paralysis, and in either case, the effect is countered by any agent that inhibits the enzymic breakdown of acetyl choline at the neuromuscular junction (for example the "as developed in Russia" nerve agent, Novichok).

The toxicity of BZ is quite low, with an estimated LD50 (dose required to create a 50% chance of death) of about one tenth of a gram, or about one millionth the toxicity of botulinum toxin. Symptoms of BZ toxicity include delirium, hallucination and general mental incapacity.

If the Spiez Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection are correct in their analysis of the samples supplied to them, either by the UK or the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (which organization is too coy to reveal what it found through multiple analyses by independent laboratories of the blood samples supplied to them by the UK Government), it could explain several features of the Skripal poisoning narrative.

First, if BZ was the agent that caused the Skripals to be hospitalized, it would explain the long delay between the time of ingestion of the poison, whether at home in the buckwheat cereal that Yulia Skripals friend had brought for the Skripals from Moscow, or at lunch with their seafood salad. Second, it would explain Sergei Skipal's loud and angry Russian-language rant about the slow service at the restaurant where they lunched as the result of BZ-induced delirium or hallucination.

What the finding of BZ poisoning refutes, if BZ was indeed the poison and not the therapeutically administered antidote to a different poison, is the evidence of a woman reported to be a doctor who attended on the Skripals in the park where they were said to have been found incapacitated. As we have already suggested, that hearsay evidence of an alleged doctor, who requested that her identity not be revealed, is highly questionable.

Furthermore, if the poisoning of the Skripals was due to BZ, then the "doctor" of undisclosed identity was surely a plant whose job it was to provide false circumstantial evidence of Novichok poisoning: specifically, her claim to reporters that the Skipals were vomiting and convulsing — symptoms quite the opposite of the physical paralysis induced by severe BZ poisoning.

Questions that remain for the British Government include the following:

Why did Dr. Davies, the Resident for Emergency Medicine at the Salisbury Trust Hospital, say that no one had been treated for nerve agent poisoning?

If as claimed the Skripals were admitted to the Salisbury Trust Hospital with symptoms of nerve agent poisoning, what analyses of blood and vomit were conducted on the orders of the attending physicians and with what results?

Unless, at this late stage, the government of Theresa May produces convincing evidence to the contrary, it must be concluded that the Skripal poisoning saga is simply a ridiculous charade written and carried out by buffoons with little relevant knowledge other than of how to so shape the lips, tongue and larynx as to emit a cloud of lies potentially culminating in a nuclear conflagration.

Postscript

An anonymous commenter has kindly drawns our attention to the following statement on Russia's UK Embassy website:

Embassy Press Officer comments on the findings of the Swiss experts regarding the Salisbury incident

According to information from the Swiss Federal Institute for NBC-protection in Spiez, its experts received samples collected in Salisbury by the OPCW specialists and finished testing them on 27 March.

The experts of the Institute discovered traces of toxic chemical called “BZ” and its precursors. It is a Schedule 2 substance under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

“BZ” is a chemical agent, which is used to temporary incapacitate people. The desired psychotoxic effect is reached in 30-60 minutes after application of the agent and lasts up to four days. According to the information the Russian Federation possesses, this agent was used in the armed forces of the USA, United Kingdom and several others NATO member states. No stocks of such substance ever existed either in the Soviet Union or in the Russian Federation.

In addition, the Swiss specialists discovered strong concentration of traces of the nerve agent of A-234 type in its initial states as well as its decomposition products.

In view of the experts, such concentration of the A-234 agent would result in inevitable fatal outcome of its administration. Moreover, considering its high volatility, the detection of this substance in its initial state (pure form and high concentration) is extremely suspicious as the samples have been taken several weeks since the poisoning.

It looks highly likely that the “BZ” nerve agent was used in Salisbury. The fact that Yulia Skripal and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey have already been discharged from hospital, and Sergei Skripal is on his way to recovery, only supports such conclusion.

All this information was not mentioned in the final OPCW report at all.

Considering the above, we have numerous serious questions to all interested parties, including the OPCW.

So the Russians are suggesting that the blood samples supplied to the OPCW were spiked with Novichok, aka A234.

The presence of both a choline esterase inhibitor (the Novichok A234) and a paralytic agent (BZ) confirms our prediction that the blood samples would contain both: one the poison; the other the antidote.

Ignoring the suspiciously high concentration of Novichok, which raises the possibility of the samples being spiked, the question then is which of the two nerve agents discovered was the poison and which the antidote. If the Novichok was the antidote, that might explain its suspiciously high concentration, since it would have been given in small doses for some time after the initial poisoning.

Friday, April 13, 2018

Having reworked and extended my earlier post Novichok: Russia's Antidote to Seafood Poisoning I am more inclined than before to believe it possible that the Skripals were treated with Novichok as an antidote to botulinum toxin, it being the case that the one nerve agent, because of a difference in mode of action, could be an effective antidote to the other nerve agent, as explained in my earlier post.

To be credible, the theory must presume orchestration of the entire sequence of events. Thus, the botulinum toxin must have been deliberately administered as a sub-lethal dose in the seafood lunch that the Skripals consumed several hours before they were taken ill. (Although botulinum toxin can occur in seafood, it does not occur in fresh seafood — as opposed to canned food, since Clostridium botulinum only produces the toxin under anoxic conditions.)

But if the affair was orchestrated, the Skripals were surely participants rather than victims in the operation, a plausible assumption since Sergei Skripal is known to have worked for MI6 and may have resumed his service to them on release from Russian gaol.

So how was it worked?

I suggest that there was a small dose of botulinum toxin added to their seafood lunch, which caused illness several hours later, but not the vomiting and convulsions as reported by the doctor who attended on them and asked that her name not be released to the public. Rather the illness would have been manifest as the paralysis characteristic of botulism. If that assumption is correct, then we must assume that the attending, unidentified doctor who described the Skripals' symptons as those of poisoning by a nerve agent of the Novichok type (i.e., a convulsant), is an agent of MI6 and that she deliberately misled the media.

Once received at the Salisbury Trust Hospital, experts in nerve agent poisoning at the nearby British Chemical and Biological Weapons research establishment would likely have been consulted, which would have created the opportunity for them to supply the hospital with British-made Novichok (a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union) as an antidote to botulinum toxin, the mechanism whereby one nerve agent counteracts another being described in my previous post. The identity of this antidote may well not have been disclosed to the Hospital staff.

After that, the Skripals may have been kept in a more or less comotose state with, perhaps repeated small doses of botulinum toxin, which would have necessitated continual infusions of Novichok to prevent paralysis and death by asphyxiation. That would explain why, weeks after the initial poisoning, blood samples of the "victims" still contained detectable quantities of Novichok, as established by independent testing of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). It would also explain why Yulia Skripal, though released from hospital, is in UK police custody.

The objective now, if the above scenario is a more or less accurate representation of actual events, must be to keep the Skripals out of the hands of the Russian state, where they could be forced to disclose their complicity in a psyop. perpetrated to undermine the credibility and moral standing of the Russian government. That would explain the offer by the CIA to give the Skripals new identities.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

UK PM, Theresa May, already in a state of Russophobic arousal because of the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of a retired Russian spy on British Soil, is now ready to follow Tony Bliar by entering into an Anglo-American war of aggression against a small middle-Eastern power, based on a pack of lies: specifically, the allegation by the usual head-chopping suspects that Syrian President Assad is killing his own people with chemical weapons. Examination of the published evidence, however, reveals a total lack of substance.

For example, US Secretary of Defense, General Mattis, a few hours ago told Congress that "he believes" that there was a chemical attack in Syria, but added that "the United States wants inspectors on the ground soon since the job of collecting evidence becomes more difficult as time passed."

So what Mattis knows about events in Douma at the time of the alleged chlorine gas attack is, apparently, nothing. But for the sake of the pro-war narrative, Mattis "believes" what there is no evidence for believing.

As for Britain's celebrated nerve agent attack on the former Russian Spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, it is interesting to note that the Skripals became ill several hours after a seafood lunch.

That is interesting because the time of onset of symptoms of poisoning relative to the time of their midday meal, i.e., an interval of several hours, is consistent with seafood poisoning, not nerve agent poisoning, which takes effect within seconds of contact.

Seafood poisoning can be due to the presence many different toxins,* including botulinum toxin, which inhibits release of acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction, thereby causing paralysis and, in severe cases, death by asphyxiation.

To counter the toxin, it would be reasonable, therefore, in a severe case, to treat patients with an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor to maximize the effect of whatever small quantity of acetylcholine is still being released into the synaptic cleft of the neuromuscular junction. Thus, if the Salisbury Trust Hospital where the Skripals were taken for treatment had requested the assistance of people at Britain's nearby Porton Down chemical and biological weapons research lab, as surely they would have, then they may well have been supplied with a small dose of British-made Novichok,** a most powerful choline esterase inhibitor, to increase the persistence of whatever acetylcholine was being produced at the neuromuscular junction***.

If that were the case, then the British Government would have the perfect set-up for the incitement of Russophobia. Specifically, they would have been in a position to supply the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons with blood samples of the afflicted Russians that contained traces of Novichok, a nerve agent "of a type developed in Russia," as British Government representatives, from Theresa May on down, have repeatedly stated.

Note:
Clearly the account of the Skripals' poisoning offered here is speculative, but it centers on a theory as to how the blood samples from the Skripals could have contained traces of Novichok in a way consistent with the letter to the Times from the Salisbury Trust Hospital's Resident in Emergency Medicine, Stephen Davies. In that letter, Davies said "no patients have experienced nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury:" a true statement if the Skripals were treated with, not poisoned by, Novichok. Botulinum toxin, it is true, is also a nerve agent, but considered, in the present context, not as a nerve agent but a form of food poisoning.

————
* Seafoods may contain many kinds of toxin, mostly of a type known as nerve agents, aka WMD's. The various toxins are produced by different microorganisms. Some toxins act as sodium-channel blockers, thereby preventing the spreading wave of electrical depolarization of nerve cell membranes that constitutes a nerve impulse.

A common microbial contaminant of seafood is Clostridium botulinum, which in one survey was found in about one quarter of all fish and shellfish samples tested. In the absence of oxygen, for example in canned fish that has been incompletely sterilized, Clostridium botulinum produces botulinum toxin, the deadliest poison known, ten billionths of a gram being sufficient to cause death.

As an inhibitor of acetylcholine release at the neuromuscular junction, botulinum toxin causes paralysis. The effect of botulinum toxin should thus be countered by nerve agents such as Novichok an inhibitor acetylcholine esterase, which causes tetany, or intense muscle contraction, by preventing break-down of whatever acetylcholine is released at the neuromuscular juction.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

British Prime Minister, Theresa May, claims that the Russian spy turned British double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, were the victims of an attempted nerve-agent assassination conducted on British soil on the direct orders of President Putin.

However, the evidence presented by the British state to substantiate its extraordinary allegation is, as we discussed, here, (and here, and here) essentially non-existent. Rather it appears from the circumstances that the incident was staged by the British state to stoke Russophobia. That would explain the timing, in advance of this week's almost certainly fake chemical weapons attack on civilians in Syria by, so Western media assert without evidence or question, Russia's ally, the Government of Syria.

Consistent with that inference is that the two incidents have been acclaimed with joy by warmongers in both London and Washington, DC as justification for NATO intervention in support of ISIS head-choppers in Syria against the Russian-backed Syrian Government.

Who then constitutes the greatest threat to the well-being of the Skripals? Is it the British state that apparently mounted either a fake or a failed nerve agent attack on them, an attack it then vociferously blamed on the Russians? Or is it the Russians who pardoned Sergei Skripal and released him from gaol years ago?

As long as one or both of the Skripals lives, whether under their own name or another, they represent a risk to the government of British Prime Minister, Theresa May, since they might reveal what actually happened in Salisbury when they were, according to the unsubstantiated claim of the British Government, exposed to the deadliest known nerve agent on the direct orders of President Putin.

For the Skripals, the opportunity can hardly be appealing. Not only must they sever all ties with family and friends in Russia and elsewhere, but the offer entails obvious personal risk.

Having induced them to depart the scene in name, why would the British state or their friends in America, not have them depart the scene in body and spirit also. Their identities already erased, supposedly for their own good, who would know, or even think to ask, whether they had also been silenced permanently by the hand of a British or American state assassin?

To the Russians, however, the Skripals are more valuable alive than dead as witnesses to a British operation designed to stoke Western Russophobia as a prelude to war. That they are of potential value to the Russians, is of course, the reason why the appear to be at great risk as long as they remain in the hands of the British state.

Monday, April 9, 2018

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Former British Ambassador, Craig Murray, has made a compelling case that Boris Johnson, Britain's Foreign Secretary, lied in claiming that the poisoning of Russian traitor Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England, was with a nerve agent, Novichok, "made in Russia."

Johnson's additional claim that the attack was ordered, personally, by Russian President Putin is almost certainly, therefore, as baseless. That such "mad and horrible" allegations against Russia, as they have been described by Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, are being made by the British Government suggests the existence of a propaganda campaign in preparation for war. For that reason, the Skripal poisoning story deserves close public examination.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is an agency for the deception of the public at public expense. Almost any snatch of a CBC news broadcast or public policy discussion will, on examination, be found to encapsulate a lie.

A meme currently being foisted on the public by the CBC is that trade protectionism hurts the public by raising prices. The inference being that higher prices due to trade protectionism hurt every Canadian.

That is the lie.

The purpose of trade protectionism is to raise wages of people who will produce the goods that would otherwise be imported from collapsible factories in Bangladesh, Chinese electronics assembly plants with anti-suicide nets, etc. So yes, tariffs raise prices but they also raise incomes of working people. So trade protectionism makes many working people better off at the expense mainly of those in the FIRE and globalized sectors of the economy. Protectionism would also allow Canada to rebuild some of its battered manufacturing sector that was undermined by NAFTA and devastated by free trade with the sweat-shop economies.

Yes protectionism results in retaliatory measures, but what do low-wage economies buy from Canada? Not much. Seventy-seven point four percent of Canadian exports go to the US and Mexico which are largely free of protectionist tariffs against Canadian goods. The rest consists in those incredibly cheap shoes and shirts, and omputers and car parts that Canadians used to make for one another but now buy in large quantities from exploiters of sweated Asian labor.

In fact, a protected US Market to which Canadians have free access by virtue of the NAFTA agreement would provide huge opportunities for Canadian manufacturing.

Metro, April 4, 2018: The Foreign Office has deleted a tweet blaming Russia for the Salisbury attack after UK scientists announced they had not verified the source of the nerve agent used. The Government had posted a message online that stated the Kremlin was responsible. It said: ‘Analysis by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down made clear that this was a military-grade Novichok nerve agent produced in Russia.’ But yesterday Gary Aitkenhead, from the Government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, said the role of his lab was not to work out where the agent came from. He added the Government’s conclusion that it was highly likely to be Russian was based on ‘a number of other sources.’ The Foreign Office confirmed it had taken the tweet down because it had been an inaccurate summary of comments made by the UK’s ambassador to Russia.

The inability of Porton Down to ascribe blame to Russia means that intelligence is now the key factor in the accusation against the Kremlin. And such overwhelming dependence on intelligence, most of it unknown to the public, has inevitably led to comparison with the fake intelligence which was used to justify the Iraq invasion.

It is also perhaps inevitable that Mr Johnson would be in the centre of the controversy. In an interview two weeks ago he had stated that Porton Down scientists were “absolutely categorical” that the novichok came from Russia: “I asked the guy myself, I said ‘are you sure?’ And he said ‘there’s no doubt’.”

But “the guy”, Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) at Porton Down, was pretty clear that although the scientists had ascertained the agent was novichok, “we haven’t identified the precise source”.

The foreign secretary’s aides are insisting that he was misunderstood and his words have been taken out of context. But at the same time, the Russian embassy gleefully pointed out, the Foreign Office deleted a tweet from last month saying that Porton Down had established that the novichok used in the attack definitely came from RussiaRead more

Moon of Alabama, April 4, 2018: When a scandal breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up is often regarded as even more reprehensible than the original deeds.

The British government is trying to cover-up the lies it made with its false allegations against Russia. The cover-up necessitates new lies some of which we expose below.

Yesterday the head of the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down stated that the laboratory can not establish that the poison used in the alleged 'Novichok' attack in Salisbury was produced by Russia. This was a severe blow to the British government allegations of Russian involvement in the poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal.

Now the British government tries to hide that it said that the poison used in the Salisbury was 'produced in Russia' and that Porton down had proved that to be the case. The government aligned media are helping to stuff the government lies down the memory hole.

We all need to make sure that the new lies get exposed and that the attempts to change the record fail.

Yesterday the British Foreign Office deleted this from its Twitter account:

The March 22 tweet was part of a now interruptedthread which summarized a briefing on the UK government's response to the Salisbury incident given by the British Ambassador to Russia, Dr Laurie Bristow, to the international diplomatic community in Moscow.

After it emerged on Wednesday that the tweet had been deleted, the Foreign Office said the post was removed because it "did not accurately report" the words of Laurie Bristow, the UK's ambassador to Russia, which the tweet was supposed to be quoting.

Former UK Ambassador, Craig Murray, who called out UK Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for lying about the poisoning, in Salisbury England, of former Russian spy, Sergei Skrypal, and his daughter Yulia, has returned to the attack with three new pieces posted at his blog:

We may yet see a man dismissed from the service of the British Government by a lying Blair government, play a critical role in the dismissal of Theresa May's lying government from the service of the people.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Daily Mail, March 28, 2018: Russia has demanded that London provide proof that British spies did not carry out the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that their analysis of the assassination attempt has them to believe in 'a possible involvement in it of the British intelligence services'.

The Ministry says that in the absence of proof of British innocence, Moscow will regard the incident as an attempt on the lives of Russian citizens on foreign soil.

Since the British statements about the poisoning have consisted in a combination of what we know to be lies, implausible inferences, and threats which taken together make little sense, unsupported by any results of a supposedly ongoing police investigation, Russia's position has plausibility.

Lauren Southern, a Canadian citizen, was barred from entry to the UK on March 13. She was held under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. A notice of refusal to enter stated that Southern’s actions in Luton on a previous visit to England presented “a threat to the fundamental interests of society and public policy of the United Kingdom.”

Her crime? She'd handed out flyers emblazoned with messages like “Allah is a gay God” and “Allah is trans” in Luton. According to news reports, these were "racist" flyers, although in what way they were racist is not clear, for although they might be considered anti-Muslim, Islam is not a race.

Her expulsion from Britain proves her point. Britain enforces Sharia law but treats Christianity with contempt, a fact that brings to mind this comment by Dr. Daniels, aka Theodore Dalrymple.

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

Re: The poisoning of Segei and Yulia Skirpal in Salisbury, England
Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down; our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so; Russia's record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations*; and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations; the Government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Mr. Speaker, there are therefore only two plausible explanations for what happened in Salisbury on the 4th of March.

Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country.

Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.

The fact that the incident in Salisbury occurred days before the Russian Presidential election has of course nothing to do with it.

The fact that the incident in Salisbury occurred just a couple of months before Russia is to host the World cup has of course nothing to do with it.

The fact that the incident in Salisbury occurred in the months leading up to completion of the NordStream II gas line to deliver Russian natural gas to North Western Europe, a project that US interests still seek to block to the benefit of US exporters of liquefied natural gas, a surplus byproduct of oil fracking, has of course nothing to do with it.

The fact that Trump is gunning for a war on a Russia-backed Iran for which the incident in Salisbury may yet provide a pretext, is not to be thought of.

The fact that Putin has no reason to seek a war for which the incident in Salisbury could so readily serve as a pretext, at a time when Russia and China are still racing to surpass the US in arms both quantitatively and qualitatively, is of course irrelevant.

No, clearly, Putin decided that since now was the worst possible time to murder a Russian spy — a man already pardoned by the Russian state — using a terror weapon with Russia’s signature on it, on foreign soil, then this was, in fact, the best time since no one would believe the Russians to be that damn stupid. Trouble for Putin is that everyone is so damn stupid that they really do think the Russians are that damn stupid.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

CraigMurray.org.uk, 22 Mar, 2018: Evidence submitted by the British government in court today proves, beyond any doubt, that Boris Johnson has been point blank lying about the degree of certainty Porton Down scientists have about the Skripals being poisoned with a Russian “novichok” agent.

Yesterday in an interview with Deutsche Welle Boris Johnson claimed directly Porton Down had told him they positively identified the nerve agent as Russian:

(Actually, he did, sort of, by introducing a carbon tax, but without eliminating all the other schemes and bureaucratic controls, or providing for a countervailing duty on products from countries without a carbon tax. So it won't work.)